Introduction: New challenges in digital history: sharing women's history on Wikipedia

[slide – title, my details]
Hi, I'm Mia. I'm actually doing a PhD on scholarly crowdsourcing, or collaboratively
creating online resources, and, thinking about the impact of digitality on the
practices of historians, so this paper is indirectly related to my research but
isn't core to it.
I proposed this paper as a deliberate provocation: 'if we believe the subjects of our
research are important, then we should ensure they are represented on freely
available encyclopedic sites like Wikipedia'. Just in case you're not familiar
with it, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia 'that anyone can edit.' It contains 25 million
articles, over 4 million of them in English, but also in 285 other languages,
and has 100,000 active contributors[1].

'Brilliant Women' at the National Portrait Gallery

The genesis of this paper was
two-fold. The 2008 exhibition 'Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings' at
the UK National Portrait Gallery, made the point that 'Despite the fact that 'bluestockings'
made a substantial contribution to the creation and definition of national
culture their intellectual participation and artistic interventions have
largely been forgotten'. As a computer programmer, reinventing the wheel and
other inefficient processes drive me crazy, and I began to think about how
digital publishing could intervene in the cycle of remembering and forgetting
that seemed to be the fate of brilliant women throughout history. How could
historians use digital platforms to stop those histories being lost and to make
them easy for others to find?

[Screenshot – Caitlin Moran quote
from How to be a woman: 'Even the
ardent feminist historian, male or female – citing Amazons and tribal
matriarchies and Cleopatra – can't conceal that women have done basically
f*ck-all for the last 100,000 years']
A few years later, by then a
brand-new PhD student, I attended the Women's History Network conference in
London in 2011 and learnt of so many interesting lives that challenged
conventional mainstream historical narratives of gender. I wished that others
could hear those stories too. But when I
asked if any of these histories were available outside academia on sites like
Wikipedia, there was a strong sense that editing Wikipedia was something that
other people did. But who better to make
a case for better representation of women's histories than the people in that
room? Who else has the skills, knowledge and the passion? Some academic battles may have been won
regarding the importance of women's histories, but representing women's
histories on the sites where ordinary people start their queries is hugely
important. The quote on this slide illustrates why – even if it was meant in
jest, it represents a certain world view.

[slide – Scripps editathon, #tooFEW]
Things move
fast in the digital world and we're at a different moment than the one when I
proposed this paper. Gender issues on Wikipedia had been discussed for a number
of years but there's been a recent burst of activity, including the #tooFEW ('Feminists
Engage Wikipedia') editathons – 'a scheduled time where people edit Wikipedia
together, whether offline, online, or a mix of both' - [3],
held online and in person across four physical sites.[4] [5]
I was going to be provocative and ask you to create Wikipedia entries about the histories
you've invested so much in researching, but some of that is happening already.
As a result, this is version 2 of this paper, but my starting question remains
the same – assuming we believe that women's history is important, what's wrong
with our current methods of research dissemination and dialogue?

The case of the Invisible Scholarship

[slide –
outline of section]
Cumulative
centuries of archival and theoretical work have been spent recovering women's
histories, yet much of this inspiring scholarship might as well not exist when
so few people have access to it. Sadly, it's currently the case that scholarship
that isn't deliberately made public is invisible outside academia. The open
access movement, with all its thorny complications, is one potential solution.
Engaging in new forms of open scholarship and disseminating research on sites
where the public already goes to learn about history is another.

If
it's not Googleable, it doesn't exist.

[slide – screenshot of unsuccessful search for
Ina von Grumbkow]
Most
content searches start and end online. The content and links available to
search engines inform their assumptions about the world, and they in turn shape
the world view presented on the results screen. If the name of a historical
figure doesn't show up in Google, how else would someone find out about them?
While college students might be heavy users of Google's specialist Google
Scholar search, it's unlikely that people would come across it accidentally,
not least because there's a 'semantic gap' between the language used in
academia and the language used in everyday speech. Writing for Wikipedia means
writing in everyday language, and the site is heavily indexed by search engines
– it doesn't take long for content created on Wikipedia – even on a user's talk
page and not the main site – to show up in Google results. So one reason to
take history on Wikipedia seriously is that it affects what search engines know
about the world.

'Did you mean… hegemony?'

[slide –
screenshot of search for 'Viscountess Ranelagh and the Authorisation of
Women's Knowledge in the Hartlib Circle', Google says 'Did you mean Viscount'.
No.]
Scholarship and sources contained in specialist
online archives and repositories are often off-limits to the Google bots that
crawl the web looking for content to index. Because search engines normalise certain
assumptions about the world, getting more content about women's histories in
publically accessible spaces will eventually have an effect in the algorithms
that determine suggestions for 'did you mean' etc. Contributions to sites like
Wikipedia can eventually become contributions to the 'knowledge graphs' that
determine the answers to questions we ask online.

If
it's behind a paywall, it only exists for a privileged few

[Slide -
Screenshot of blocked attempt to access 'Wives and daughters of early Berlin geoscientists
and their work behind the scenes']
Specialist
users will be able to find academic research via Google Scholar, but any
independent scholars in attendance will be able to speak to the difficulties in
gaining access to journal articles without membership of an institutional
library. Journal articles obviously have a lot of value within academic
communities, but the research they represent is only available to a privileged
few.

Why does Wikipedia matter?

[slide: For
some, Wikipedia is the font of all wisdom]
Wikipedia
is one of the most visited websites in the world. As one commentator said, 'people
turn to Wikipedia as an objective resource' but ' it's not so objective in many
ways.'[6]

However,
as the free online encyclopedia 'that anyone
can edit', it also provides the ability to take direct action to fix the
under-representation of women's history. President of the AHA, William Cronon said, 'Wikipedia provides an
online home for people interested in histories long marginalized by the
traditional academy'[7] – this may not be entirely true yet, but we can hope.

Wikipedia
is not yet encyclopedic

[Slide –
Ina screenshot]
The English
version of Wikipedia has over 4 million articles but it still has some way to
go to become truly encyclopedic. Martha
Saxton has noted the absence of women's history content on Wikipedia and was
distressed by 'its superficiality and inaccuracies when present [8]'.
Just as female assistants, secretaries, collectors, illustrators,
correspondents, translators, salonists, cataloguers, text book writers,
popularisers, explorers, pioneers and colleagues have been left out of traditional
academic histories and gradually reclaimed by historians, they are often still
invisible on Wikipedia. This may be partly because not enough women edit
Wikipedia – as Wikipedia User Gobonobo says, 'editors often contribute
to topics they are familiar with and that concern them [...] This systemic bias
has the potential to exacerbate an historical record that already gives undue
emphasis to men.' [9]

The
under-representation of women's history undermines Wikipedia's claim to be
encyclopedic. Issues include missing entries or omissions in coverage for
existing topics, entries with inaccurate content, a failure to represent a
truly 'neutral point of view', and a representation of 'male' as the default
gender.

Many notable women have been buried in pages titled for
their husbands, brothers, tutors, etc. In 1908 Ina von Grumbkow undertook an expedition
to Iceland. She later made significant contributions to the field of natural
history and wrote several books but other than passing references online and a
mention on her husband's Wikipedia page, her story is only available to those
with access to sources like the ' Earth Sciences History'
journal[10][11].

Wikipedia and the challenges of digital history

Writing for Wikipedia encapsulates many, but not all, of the challenges
of digital history.

New forms of writing

Writing for Wikipedia calls upon historians to write engaging,
intellectually accessible, succinct text that still accurately represents its
subject. It not only means valuing the work and skills in writing public
history, it requires the ability to write history in public.

Writing for a 'neutral point of view' – one of the key
values of Wikipedia – is challenging for historians. Many may find difficult to
believe that it's even possible, and it's difficult to achieve [12].

Unlike traditional historical scholarship, characterised by 'possessive
individualism' [13] and
honed to perfection before publication, Wikipedia entries are considered a work
in progress, and anyone who spots an issue is asked to fix it themselves or
flag it for others to review.

It won't advance your career

While it might have a large public impact, editing Wikipedia
is work that isn't credited in academia, and it takes time that could be used
for projects that would count for career advancement. More importantly from
Wikipedia's point of view, you can't promote your own work on the site, so writing
about your own research interests is not straightforward if not many people have
published in your area of expertise.

“On the internet, nobody knows you're a professor”

In a comment with 'pointers for academics who would like to
contribute to Wikipedia' on a Chronicle article, commentator 'operalala' said, '"On
the internet nobody knows you're a professor." If you're used to
deferential treatment at your home institution, you'll be treated like
everybody else in the Wide Open Internet.'[14]
Or in William Cronon's words, you must 'give up the comfort of credentialed
expertise'.[15] Anyone can edit, re-shape or even delete your work.

Just like academia, Wikipedia has ways of establishing the
credibility and reputation of a contributor, and just like any other community,
there are etiquettes and conventions to observe. As newcomers to the community,
Claire Potter warns that it's important not to think of Wikipedia as 'another realm for
intellectuals to colonize and professionalize'.[16]

The opportunities and challenges of women's history
as public history on Wikipedia

Opportunities

Wikipedia
uses red links to represent entries that could be created but don't yet exist.
Women's history editathons often create lists of red-linked names as suggested
topics that could be created [17] .
Projects on and outside Wikipedia, and events at institutions like the
Smithsonian and Royal Society and just last weekend at three THATCamps across
the United States might be part of a critical mass of people learning how to
edit Wikipedia to better include women's history.

Compared to
the lengthy process of writing for academic publication, a new Wikipedia entry
can be created in a few hours, allowing for time to structure the content and
format the references as necessary to pass the first quality bar. An existing entry can be corrected in
minutes. Each editathon or personal edit
improves the representation of women's history, and there's something very
satisfying about turning red links blue.

Ina von Grumbkow's name red-linked on her husband's Wikipedia page

Adding the
brackets that turn a piece of text into a red link, suggesting the possibility
of an entry to be created is a small but potentially powerful intervention. Red
links can render the gaps and silences visible.

Resistance

Creating or editing entries on women's history may be
relatively easy, but making sure they stay there is less so. There are countless examples of women having
to fight to keep changes in as other editors revert them, argue about their
choice of sources, the significance or notability of their topic. Wikipedians are zealous in
preventing spammers and crackpots polluting the quality of the site, which
explains some of the rapid 'nominations for deletion', but some pockets of the
site are also hostile to women's history or to women themselves.

Saxton said
editing Wikipedia is 'not for the faint of heart' and 'a lesson in how little women's
history has penetrated mainstream culture'. There's work to be done in sharing
and normalising an understanding of the historical circumstances and cultural
contexts that created difficulties for women. We might know that, as Janet
Abbate said, 'The laws and social conventions of a given time and place
strongly shape the kinds of technical training available to women and men, the
career options open to them, their opportunities for advancement and
recognition' [18]
but until other Wikipedians understand that, there will continue to be issues
around 'notability'. Having those
conversations as many times as necessary might be tiring and uncomfortable or
even controversial, but it's part of the work of representing women's history
on Wikipedia.

Tensions

'Reliable sources'

Wikipedians
may have different definitions of 'reliable sources' than scholarly
researchers. As one academic discovered:
"Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if
most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed
account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."' [19]

The same gatekeepers matter

As some academics have found, 'Wikipedia differs from primary-source research, from
scholarly writing, and how it privileges existing rather than new knowledge' [20] [21]
Wikipedia is not the place to redress fundamental issues with silences in the
archives or in the profession overall, not least because on Wikipedia, primary
research is bad and secondary sources are good [22] .
This puts the onus back on to traditional academic publishing in peer-reviewed
journals and books that can be cited in Wikipedia articles, though other
published works such as 'credible and authoritative books' and 'reputable media
sources' can also be cited.

'Notability'

'A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has
received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are
independent of the subject. [...] the person who is the topic of a biographical
article should be "worthy of notice" – that is, "significant,
interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded"
within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life.' [23]
'The common theme in the notability guidelines is that there must be
verifiable, objective evidence that the subject has received significant
attention from independent sources to support a claim of notability.' [24]
This creates obvious difficulties for some women's histories.

It's also difficult to judge where 'notability' should
end. When does focusing on exceptional women become counter-productive? When do we risk creating a new canon? When does it stop being remarkable that a woman became prominent in a field and start being more accepted, if still not expected? [25] At what point should writing shift from individual entries to integration into more general topics?

Conclusion

Sometimes
it's hard to tell whether Wikipedia lags behind academia's acceptance and
general integration of women's history into mainstream history or whether it is
representative of the field's more conservative corners. Recent digital history
projects are doing a good job in explaining some of the issues with key sources
for Wikipedia like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [26] ,
and I'd hope that this continues. As Martha
Saxton said, 'integrating women's experience into broad subjects' is 'both more
challenging intellectually and ultimately, more to the point of the overall
project of bringing women into our acknowledged history'. [27]

But it's
also clearly up to us to make a difference. If it's worth researching
the life and achievements of a notable woman, it's worth making sure their
contribution to history is available to the world while improving the quality
of the world's biggest encyclopaedia. And it doesn't mean going it alone. It's
still just Women's History Month so it's not too late to sign up and join one of the women's history projects,
or to plan something with your students. [28] [29] [30]

I'd like to
close with quotes from two different women. Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Sue Gardner: 'Wikipedia will only contain 'the sum of all human
knowledge' if its editors are as diverse as the population itself: you can help
make that happen. And I can't think of anything more important to do, than
that.' [31]

And to quote Laura Mandell's keynote yesterday: 'Let's write
and publish about each other's projects so that future historians will have
those sources to write about. ... Nothing changes through thinking alone, only
through massive amounts of re-iteration'. [32]

Update, August 21, 2013: content on Wikipedia appears to have had an additional boost in Google's search results, making it even more important in shaping the world's knowledge. More at 'The Day the Knowledge Graph Exploded'.

New link, February 2014: Jacqueline Wernimont's Notes for #tooFEW Edit a thon based on a training session by Adrianne Wadewitz are a useful basic introduction to editing.]

I linked to this article through the H-Women listserve. Thanks for posting it. I've been having students write Wikipedia assignments in class for a while now and have noticed that, while they used to be able to do an entry about almost any topic on which they were writing a research paper, increasingly these topics have entries and they have to be more selective (or expand and revise existing entries). However, I never thought about doing an editathon with colleagues. This looks like fun ... and could be counted toward public service on your CV!